Why I Still Rewatch Rear Window

Rear Window is a movie about a man with a broken leg who spends a hot summer spying on his neighbors. It is also, very quietly, a movie about you, sitting in the dark, watching other people’s lives through a rectangle.

James Stewart plays the photographer stuck in his apartment, and Grace Kelly plays the woman who keeps trying to pull him back into his own life. Hitchcock almost never lets the camera leave that apartment. We only see what he can see, and we want to see more just as badly as he does.

Verdict: five pairs of binoculars out of five. Seventy-odd years later, nobody has made a better movie about looking.